A Texan conservative Anglican -- yes, a square peg -- ponders both churchly and worldly things and enjoys his new church.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Gavin Ashenden on the Philip North Affair

Studies and other responsibilities
continue to restrain my blogging.But I must direct your attention to two excellent posts on the Philip
North withdrawal and its aftermath from Rev. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, former
Chaplain to the Queen.The Ashes
of Cranmer has graciously hosted both posts here and here.

A segment from the second
post stands out.I will excerpt it
and run:

The three-card trick that Professor Percy
[The Dean of Christ Church Oxford who led the attack on North] and his cultural
fellow-travellers play is to refuse to exclude anyone except those who don’t
agree with them. You only get to be included in the equality stakes once you
have accepted their moral and political presuppositions. So, of course, they do
actually discriminate between anyone who shares their basic world view and
those who don’t.

They pretend they are relativists by claiming that
all views are equally legitimate, but become absolutists if you challenge their
relativism. In other words, their ideas of equality and relativism are actually
practised by placing their value above those who disagree with them, and
discriminating against anyone who has the audacity and moral turpitude to
dissent.

Meanwhile, they claim the higher moral ground by
pretending to be something that they are not – outlawing discrimination while
practising it.

This is, of course, hypocrisy – that is, saying one
thing while doing another.

What happens when the hypocrisy is challenged, as
with the attempt to include a bishop who embodies an older more traditional
view in an inclusive non-discriminatory Church?